Dawn and I talk while we're driving quite often. Sometimes these turn into our best conversations. We've hashed out many of the world's worst problems in those talks.
Talking during travel is one of the world's oldest past times. The Canturbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a record of a chat along the road during a pilgrimage. Moses commanded that the Law of Israel be discussed in this very way:
These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7 NIV)
What is more, these two disciples, Cleopas and another, perhaps his wife, since they wound up at the same house eating together, were grieved over the fatal officialness of it all. This wasn't a natural death, it was an execution ordered by both Jewish and Roman rulers.
Jesus sidles up beside them, asking, "what's up?"
I love Cleopas' response. It's kind of incredulous. What would they be discussing besides these tragic events? Only a newly arrived visitor would not be discussing them. Only a person who was unaware of the events of the past few days.
But Jesus feeds the man's incredulity and Cleopas explains the whole thing:
• Jesus, a powerful, godly prophet
• Was handed over by one authority to be killed by the other
• He was executed a few days ago
• We had hoped He was Messiah
• Now, some of our friends are saying they saw angels who told them He was alive
• Some went to investigate but were left unsatisfied
Imagine the grief. These people are part of a select few who knew Him well. They are friends with the Apostles and with the women who went to His tomb. This is all that has been on their minds for days. They can't think about anything else.
We see the convergence of two kinds of suffering here. Jesus' suffering was incredible:
• Betrayal
• False accusation and conviction
• Brutalization
• Piercing
• Suffocation
• Mockery
• Thirst
• Finally death
This overwhelming, physical, criminal punishment brought upon an innocent man becomes the basis for another kind of emotional suffering: grief.
• Denial
• anger
• bargaining with God
• Deep sadness and depression
Most of us have suffered grief on one level or another. Some of us have suffered it repeatedly. It always has this element of repetition: telling and retelling the story of how our grief became real. These two are caught in that cycle.
The whole event of Jesus' resurrection, though, involves overcoming suffering.
• Jesus overcoming His own suffering
• Jesus overcoming the suffering of His followers
Jesus overcoming His own suffering
is rather complete. Suffering death and overcoming by coming back to life is a complete turn around. All the pain and all the mental anguish must settle into a background of experience as the joy of leaving it behind becomes real.
Jesus died with not only His own pain on his heart, but the pain of all the sins of the world as well. If "what goes around, comes around." And if we have done bad things that will, eventually, come back to haunt us, then Jesus is hanging on the cross right there between us and those bad things, to catch them and to take our ultimate consequences.
Since the time of Adam, death is the penalty for sin, but Jesus took that penalty for us. Believers no longer die because they are sinners, they die because they are mortal human beings. The distinction may seem technical, but it is important. Because Jesus died, and he rose again, bringing an end to suffering for Himself and suffering for sin for all who believe.
Jesus also rose to overcome our suffering
Jesus' resurrection did not erase the fact of His own suffering, it overcame it.
In the same way, Christians may still suffer, but the power of that suffering has been overcome so that it may be limited by the hope of the resurrection.
Jesus listened
One of the great things about God is that He listens even though He knows all. Jesus gave these disciples a chance to tell their story from their own perspective and listened till they had opened their hearts.
This is what prayer does for us. God knows our troubles. It is one of His primary characteristics. He knows.
• He knows every nuance of every detail
• He knows the causes and the effects
• He knows the end from the beginning
• He knows the secret workings of your heart
And yet He wants you to tell Him. He wants to hear you say it. I like what C.S. Lewis says. We don't change God with our prayers. Prayer changes us. In telling God about that which He already knows, we open ourselves to gain His perspective.
Our suffering can have less of a grasp on us when we pray. When we open our hearts to God and tell Him about it till we begin gaining His perspective. If we haven't gained it yet, we aren't done praying.
Jesus opened the Scriptures
Jesus launched His efforts to overcome the grief of His followers with a new perspective on an old book. All Jews have the Law, the Writings, and the Prophets as their rightful heritage, the book given by God. But Jesus goes back into that book to mine it for a few facts that will give His death meaning.
I would love to know what He said. It would be an incredible thing to have Jesus' own interpretation of the First Testament scriptures in light of His own significance. They said:
"Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:32 NIV)
How could their hearts respond any other way?
We can only guess what He spoke of:
• How his heal would need to be struck if he was to crush the head of the serpent
• How he could be the place of safety, like the Ark, for all who would believe and come in
• How, He could be a blessing to all nations after being sacrificed only to rise alive like Isaac from the altar
• How He was the great Sin offering, sacrificed to end all need for sacrifices.
• How the throne of David needed not just a mortal king, but a king who reached through mortality and out the other side
• How His suffering was necessary in order to submit himself to the service of humanity's need
• How if there would be a New Covenant that wrote the Law on the heart, it would take a Mediator who could do the writing
The suffering of Messiah would be necessary if He was to be Messiah in the ultimate sense of the word.
Israel could be Isaiah's servant only to a point, after that, the Messiah had to come into the picture and do what no human person could do.
Daniel traced a timeline that showed the chosen one of God had to be "cut off" in order for the plan of God to move forward.
When I get to heaven, that's going to be something I want to do. I want to stand while Jesus sits and allow Him to show me what the First Testament means. We'll have eternity, so any amount of time will be worth the lecture. Anyone who wants to join that session is welcome as far as I'm concerned.
In the mean time, by reading and rereading the Scriptures in light of Jesus, His life, His death and His resurrection we come to understand more fully the purpose and point behind the things God says. Understanding God's word is a long-term element of taking victory over suffering.
He walked with them
Anyone who has suffered grief knows that some people have a blessing of presence. They can talk or they don't have to. They can help you out or they don't have to. As long as they are near, their very presence is a blessing. Simply knowing they want to be with you when you are in need is enough to help.
If any other "stranger and visitor" to the city heard that these travelers were discussing and feeling the grief of loss, some would probably have moved on ahead, faster than two depressed people will walk. But Jesus didn't. He slowed His pace and matched their sad steps. He came along beside them in their trouble.
One of the great comforts of having a risen Lord is that He has promised all who give themselves to follow Him that He would not leave us. When we are suffering, we are not alone. We may appear to be alone, that's one of the drawbacks of serving an invisible God, but He is there.
Only the resurrection could make this suffering on Jesus part take its full effect. Only victory over His own suffering could bring hope to everyone else who suffers.
Jesus revealed Himself
I remember a man in one of my childhood churches. He had the most distinctive prayers. They were long, but it was also the timbre of his voice, the passion of his requests, his volume in a huge sanctuary. I could have been in Topeka and heard him pray and I would have recognized him.
It had to be the same with Jesus. Having Him sit at your table, break your bread and bless it and then hand it around must have had a distinctive character to it. Even in his walking and talking and teaching they did not recognize Him. It isn't their fault. The Bible says they were kept from recognizing Him. After all, if they had known Him right off the bat, He would not have had the time to give them the wonderful gift of understanding they got.
Yet, when he sits in their home, at their table, handling their bread and breaking it for them, it is in that act of warm, home-baked service they see Him for who He is. It is amazing to me that the One everyone called Rabbi was more recognizable at the table than at the podium.
But the central point is this, He showed Himself. He allowed them to see that He had been with them and they didn't even know it. The realization must have been stunning.
He does that for us. In our lives, we are in trouble, in grief, in confusion and ignorance, and He is walking there beside us. We hear from Him
• in our experiences
• in our thoughts
• in our quiet prayers
• in miraculous "chance" occurrances
• in the voices of others
• in our devotional reading
and in a hundred other places, but His voice gently and persistently teaches us the wisdom we need to know in order to make sense of our suffering. Anyone who has walked with God for a significant length of time knows ideas arise that cannot be explained as anything but God's supernatural speaking into the situation.
The more we seek God the more we will find Him. It is the law of asking and receiving, seeking and finding, knocking and having the door opened. God says that He will let Himself be found if we'll look with all our hearts. A dead savior cannot speak so clearly as our risen Lord.
Jesus inspired them
As soon as they saw what had happened, they reflected and they left to tell others. Their news encouraged other people who wanted to believe. The hope Jesus brought them was more than meaning in grief or a warm reassurance that everything was going to be fine. It was a motivation to action. Their words were not unique. Others had seen Jesus too. But that only increases the excitement of a risen savior.
When we relegate Jesus' resurrection to the warmth of a family holiday, to a recurring moment of appreciation for the newness that God brings, we are doing the whole idea of resurrection a grave injustice. If Jesus really rose from the dead, it is amazing news. It deserves to be talked about and acted upon. It is no minor miracle or happenstance that can be explained away.
Jesus laid his life down and He took it up again.
This is more than can be claimed in any other resurrection. Every other person who was raised from the dead was given their life by God. Jesus, as God, took His own life back. This being the case, the very idea should change our lives. The possibilities should present themselves as endless.
The power of God who reached into the teeth of death and extracted His own life, is the power that offers new and eternal life to us ... to you.
• This life, he says will be hard, but it will be big.
• It will be full of trouble, but it will be worth it.
• It will attract persecution, but ultimately it will bring peace.
We are encouraged by these two disciples to see that Jesus, having the power to overcome His own suffering also has the power to help us overcome ours. Just as Jesus' path was through death to reach resurrection, so ours may be through pain to reach His peace. The path, though, is paved with the hope that there is an end. There is not just an end, there is a reward at the end. Those who reach their goal through suffering are offered a reward that supercedes the pain.
• This is the power of the resurrection
• It is held out freely to all
• to all who suffer
• to all who need hope.
